The Biggest Spiritual Trap You Don’t See (10 Keys to Go Beyond It)

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]I want to talk to you today about something  which I find to be very fundamental to the path and that is often misunderstood or not seen  clearly. So let us begin straight to the point.

[00:00:13]The seeker is an illusion and all seeking is  external. So it is time that you realize that and stop seeking externally. A book, a  video, or even a teacher, they are fine.

[00:00:30]They're a finger pointing to the moon. But  it's important that you don't turn the finger into an addiction, that you don't keep  seeking different fingers over and over again.

[00:00:45]Even practices, they are boats, but  don't collect them... beautiful boats, ancient boats, Tibetan boats, Zen boats,  Advaita boats, Tantric boats, Sanskrit boats with Sanskrit names and mysterious wordings that  not even the boat itself knows what it means.

[00:01:07]The mind will always say perhaps the next finger,  perhaps the next boat, perhaps the next teaching, perhaps the next teacher, perhaps the next  video will finally give me the secret.

[00:01:23]Perhaps it will finally give you the  ultimate answer or the ultimate pointer.

[00:01:31]The mind is very clever with this external  seeking. But what you are seeking is in you.

[00:01:36]Please understand it's really in you. Not the  you that is anxious or restless or even seeking.

[00:01:44]Not even the you that wants to become  spiritual, awakened, liberated.

[00:01:50]That "you" is only an illusion trying to stay in  charge. You are not that. The final answer you're looking for is found in the deep silence within  you, in your own awareness, in your own being.

[00:02:07]Let's look at the absurdity of  it: A wave is looking for water.

[00:02:14]A fish is looking for the ocean.  A person in broad sunlight is carrying a lamp searching for light. And it  would be very funny if it were not so painful.

[00:02:32]From childhood you have been taught to look  outward. Someone else knows. Someone else has the answer. Your parents, your teachers, your priests,  your books, your society, everyone else knows.

[00:02:46]And slowly, slowly you forget the taste of  your own being. You kind of become secondhand.

[00:02:54]Your beliefs are borrowed. Are your desires even  really yours? Even the word God or enlightenment is just something you've heard. And most  people have not really looked deeply into what those words point to. They just continuously seek  to collect maps and pointers. And of course, maps and pointers are useful, extremely useful, but  they are not the terrain, they are not the moon.

[00:03:27]Kiss the map, worship the map, frame the  map, chant the mantra before the map, but you will still not smell the pine  tree, you will not feel the breeze.

[00:03:42]Awakening, freedom, enlightenment, liberation... They are not achieved by adding more things. It's  more about removing the noise than adding anything whatsoever. And awakening is not an achievement.  Liberation is definitely not an achievement.

[00:04:01]It is not the gold medal given to the  most disciplined meditators who sit the straightest and count the most  breaths on mantras. No. And you do not really awaken. You do not really become  enlightened. It's more like you vanish. And this is difficult for the ego to accept because  the ego wants enlightenment. It wants to wear the medal. It wants it to be the final decoration. It  wants to proclaim that it has renounced the world that it has conquered desire and realize its true  nature. And the ego can even say, "I have no ego."

[00:04:43]So understand that the one who wants to be  enlightened, the one who's seeking enlightenment, is often the very veil over enlightenment.  The one who wants to be free is the prison.

[00:04:57]And this does not mean that you should reject  teachers, books, meditations, practices.

[00:05:05]Do not go in the opposite direction.  And that's because that's the mind again. And the mind loves extremes. First it  clings to everything and then it proclaims, "I need nothing" and becomes  proud of needing nothing.

[00:05:20]That's not the way. Use everything but don't  really cling to anything. Read the book but do not do not carry it over your head forever.  Listen to the teacher but do not become a parrot.

[00:05:39]Meditation and practice, remember, it's not  something you do. It's an allowing of what is already here to reveal itself, like a space  where all doing relaxes and something is revealed.

[00:06:00]A real teacher does not give you truth. They  kind of take away all your lies instead.

[00:06:09]A real teaching does not fill you up. It  does not give you more. It empties you.

[00:06:18]A real practice does not make  you special. It makes you simple.

[00:06:22]So stop searching if as if you  were missing. You are not missing.

[00:06:30]A real teacher is not a body sitting  on a throne. The real teacher is grace.

[00:06:36]The real teacher is awareness. The real  teacher is the lightless light shining in you.

[00:06:43]Ramana Maharshi used to give a beautiful  analogy: He said that the body mind of a teacher is also part of the dream, also an appearance,  also not something ultimately real, but it could be, it can be an illusion that can  help you awaken, like a lion appearing in an elephant's dream. The lion is also a made of dream  stuff. But when it roars, the elephant wakes up.

[00:07:15]The mystery of a genuine teacher is not that  they are somebody special, but that through them the impersonal roars. Through their presence, you  become effortlessly aware of your presence like an effortless pointer... really.

[00:07:35]Existence is wild. It can put wisdom in unexpected  places like a beggar's silence, a child's laugh, a dog sleeping in the sun, or in your own  awareness, in your own being, in your own heart, when you stop for a moment trying  to improve them or change them.

[00:07:58]So, you can definitely use the so-called  external as a mirror, but don't carry it forever.

[00:08:05]The mirror is precious because it shows your true  face. It shows who truly are. But when you see who you are, you don't need to glue the mirror to your  back and carry it for the rest of your life. No.

[00:08:20]The real teacher is not outside of you. Yet,  it can use the outside to turn you inward.

[00:08:27]The real teacher is not inside of you either  because inside and outside belong to the dream.

[00:08:34]The real teacher is the awakening power of  awareness itself. And the lion may appear outside but the awakening happens here. And when you  awaken you see that there was never a lion, there was never an elephant, there was never  a dreamer. Perhaps there was only that roar, only the lightless light shining nowhere yet  illuminating everything. Seeking externally reinforces duality. It reinforces separation. So  right now, where is the seeker? If you see deeply, in this pure seeing, the notion of a seeker  begins to fade. And when the seeker fades, seeking loses its fever. Then books can be truly  enjoyed, teachers can be truly loved, nondual practices can be truly used.  There is no more ego desperation anymore.

[00:09:40]If after all of this the mind still asks,  "But how do I awaken? How do I get there?"

[00:09:50]See that imbued into that question there is  already an ego trick trying to keep you asleep.

[00:09:57]There is no "there," there is no future  awakening. There is no special earth ascension that will take you to the fifth dimension.  No, no, no. There is only this moment here being resisted. There is no "enlightened self"  waiting for you at the end of the journey.

[00:10:16]There is the falling away of the seeker.

[00:10:23]Just sit quietly. Sit quietly and see who  wants these results. Sit quietly and see who is the one desiring, comparing, hoping,  demanding. But please no judging. The little seeker in you has suffered much... it is, they  are tired, it is very tired. This seeker... just be kind to it. But don't believe in the  seeker. Where the seeker dissolve in awareness, when the seeker dissolves, you don't really  find truth because the finder is gone.

[00:11:03]The dream of being lost ends. It is truth that  finds itself without having ever forgotten itself in the first place. Freedom kind  of shines when the one wants to possess it kinda disappears. You do not awaken.  You vanish, and awakening simply is.

[00:11:28]That's why all genuine spirituality is a kind of  death, not of the body of course but of the this little self the self that says, "I am separate,  I am incomplete." When this one is seen through, not destroyed, but seen through, like the  mist vanishes in the morning sun, there is no explosion of fireworks necessarily.

[00:11:58]The heavens may not open and that is  totally okay. Don't look for that.

[00:12:07]Ultimately you cannot awaken because you are the  dream. That "you" that you take yourself to be is the illusion. The "you" that wants to awaken  prevents awakening. The ego mind is what must go.

[00:12:28]So stop seeking externally. Stop reinforcing  separation. Pause. Take a deep breath and consciously rest in your being.

[00:12:48]That's all it takes. That's the way.  But don't believe me. Beliefs are cheap.

[00:12:58]But seeing what I'm saying, this thing  will cost you everything. And by everything I really mean that which was  never truly yours: Separation.